The Taken by Inger Ash Wolfe

supper. As they went into what he presumed was Glynnis’s office, the front door opened and they heard Andrew greeting his wife.
    “Is your mother still living here?”
    “She’s having her pre-dinner nap,” said Hazel. “Now show me what you were talking about.”
    Wingate waited for the computer to boot up and connect. They were still using dialup in this house, and it took a few minutes. He typed in the url and waited for the image to load. On a slower connection, the pan wasn’t as smooth as it had been at the detachment, and the irregular movement across the room made the short clip seem even more menacing. She sat down in front of the screen and he showed her where to look at the end of the sequence, and when she saw the flicker of the two body parts, she started. He pointed out the eye to her and she was silent, taking in its significance, as he and Jenner had. He was surprised to see that the pan ended a half-inch or so past where it had terminated an hour earlier. “There’s more now,” he said.
    “It’s longer?”
    “It shows more,” he said. “At the station house we could only see the very edge of the knee and arm. And that eye. Now there’s a bit of bicep and more pantleg.” The leg was still juddering nervously and the floating traumatized eye stared out ceaselessly. An extra second or so had been made visible at theend owing to the extension of the pan. Hazel was shaking her head slowly.
    “Well, that’s creepy as all hell. Is it happening right now? Is it live?”
    “I can’t tell.”
    “And an hour ago, there was less?”
    “Just a bit.”
    She studied the sequence a couple more times. “So someone sinks a mannequin expecting it to be pulled up in order for us to decode a set of numbers and tune in on time to see
this?”
She swivelled in the chair. “Where are we with our fishing couple?”
    “We have two numbers and one seems to be disconnected. It rings a couple of times and then there’s a busy signal. The other just rings. I don’t know if one’s a cell or what, or if these people live together even.”
    “How many times have you called?”
    “A few. But it’s the long weekend and until I saw this, I wasn’t sure how urgent –” “Did you run the names?”
    “CPIC has nothing. I can do a reverse trace on the numbers and get some addresses.”
    “Good. And in the meantime, get Howard Spere’s eggheads on this site and see if they can figure out who’s uploading it.”
    “I also tried Eldwin’s number, but his wife said he was out of town for the long weekend.”
    “I bet he is. Who is this guy, anyway?”
    “Apparently, he’s a writer.”
    “Well, either he has some strange fans, or he’s working out writer’s block in a very active fashion. Find out more about him, would you? And keep trying to reach him.”
    “I will.”
    She looked at the screen again. “Judging by the rate at which the camera is exposing our friend here, we might have the whole face by morning. It’d be nice to know who it is.” She touched the screen with her finger. “What do you think the shadow behind the chair is?”
    “I can’t tell,” said Wingate. “It tapers a bit as it approaches the ceiling. It could be a person. But it’s pretty still for a live person.”
    “It’s not hard to stay still for as long as we’re seeing this.” She turned off the browser and pushed the chair back. “So,” she said, “someone sinks a mannequin in Gannon Lake so we can watch their mystery show. Is this an elaborate prank, or not?”
    “I’m leaning toward not a prank.”
    “When you talk to Spere about this upload, give him those black pictures you showed me, too. I’m getting a bad feeling about all of this.”
    “Me too,” he said.
    “Catch me up in the morning.”
    A voice was waking her up. She thought maybe she was dreaming that she was trying to wake up and she attempted to open her eyes and see the room. She heard the voice again. It was saying
don’t be late, don’t